IT Management

Managing IT Professionals

This seminar is designed for new and current managers who work in and around IT professionals. In particular, the speedy pace of this class may be most useful to those managers who have come to IT from other areas of the company, or who have one or two IT employees in an otherwise non-IT group.

Objectives
Attendees will learn:

Managing workplace culture of IT. A successful workplace culture has much to do with understanding the unique ways that IT professionals interact with each other, and helping them to understand the language of the users and customers.
Listening: Because a group of IT professionals is likely to have a different psychological profile (such as Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator), managers of IT professionals must learn to listen in a different way. In our look at these differences, we also discuss "emotional intelligence" and how it affects the management/IT interface in your corporation.
Coaching: IT professionals are always looking for mentors! Frequently, they turn first to the supervisor and are disappointed if that person cannot be a direct mentor. Consequently, the IT supervisor needs to tackle this problem through locating mentors, and using staff meetings and supervisory chats in innovative ways.
Handling difficult situations: IT professionals "rebel" more than other groups, frequently in response to issues of process and freedom. We take you through the ways that you can identify and deal with these situations to get all your company's departments moving in the same direction.
Managing the time of the IT professional: The stereotype programmer comes in late, and works through the night. This can make if quite difficult to track accountability for the work, as well as to support the necessary communication and conversation with other groups in the company. We will give you some ideas to smooth out these difficulties and some guidelines for creating an orderly work environment that still has freedom.
Identifying resources: Most IT professionals are quite concerned with developing their careers, simply because the medium that they are working in changes quickly. The desired direction of career development may not always be in the direction the corporation perceives as "up.” We discuss how to keep everyone happy and fulfilled through examining the benefits of training and conferences. We also provide you with some ideas on organizing meaningful peer training.
Keeping skilled workers: Balance between work and personal objectives. We all know that salary alone will not retain employees. However, IT employees leave for a variety of reasons that may be different from the rest of your organization. We help you learn why IT employees leave, what they perceive as recognition and recreation, and we show you how to integrate these programs with the other ones in your organization.
Supervising performance: We show you how to document IT roles and the performance and pay associated with them. We look at common tools for evaluation (360 reviews, performance management, customer feedback, and others) and suggest to you how to put together a consistent evaluation system.
Reviews: We suggest a review system that joins objective and subjective reviews with the organizational goals. We also provide guidelines on evaluating the response of the IT professional, and some suggestions on striking a balance between evaluating past work and targeting future growth.

Duration- 1 day

Who Should Attend
Anyone who manages IT professionals, especially those from outside the IT world will be well served by this course. Additionally, new IT managers may find the material well suited to their position, as we will cover issues and challenges that are specific to the IT community.

Class format Lecture, and Discussion

Instructor: George Kelly Flanagin or Susan R. Jacobs or Dr. Pamela Kiecker or John N. Pastore Jr.